Trump approves a firing squad for the Fort Hood killer: the first military execution by firing squad since World War II

The Pentagon has announced that former US Army major Nidal Malik Hasan will be executed by firing squad. The recommendation came from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and President Donald Trump approved it. "Hasan's judgment day has finally come," Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell wrote on X. It will be the first military execution by firing squad since the end of World War II.

The crime is not in dispute. On 5 November 2009, Hasan, an army psychiatrist and doctor from Virginia, opened fire in a crowded medical building at the Fort Hood base in Texas. Soldiers preparing for deployment were waiting there for medical checks and vaccinations. He killed 13 unarmed American soldiers and wounded another 32 people. It is the deadliest attack on a US military base not connected to combat operations.

At his court-martial in 2013, Hasan admitted he was the attacker and apologised for "any mistakes", but also said he believed he was protecting Muslims and the Taliban in Afghanistan. He was found guilty on 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder. A jury of 13 military officers unanimously recommended the death penalty.

A punishment the military had forgotten

The US military last executed a man in 1961 - Private John Bennett, hanged for raping an 11-year-old girl. In 1983 a military appeals court declared the military death penalty unconstitutional, and a year later Ronald Reagan reinstated it by executive order. Hasan is one of four prisoners awaiting execution in the military system. Before the firing squad, there will still be an appellate review and a final decision on legality, and the time and place will be set by the Secretary of the Army.

Trump is an open supporter of the death penalty. He restored it at federal level by executive order on his very first day in office, in January 2025, after the moratorium the Justice Department introduced under Joe Biden. The order describes it as "an essential tool for deterring and punishing". The firing squad is rare anyway: last year South Carolina carried out an execution by firing squad, the first in the US in 15 years. The death penalty is legal in 27 states, in the military and at federal level.

Nobody disputes that Hasan committed a massacre. The question is a different one: why does a state that hasn't reached for this punishment in the military for 65 years bring it back now, of all ways with a firing squad and a social media post? When a sentence arrives with the slogan "judgment day has finally come", justice starts to look like a political show.